Said and Done
by Moon Faery
Summary: HAITUS. Draco's found himself in a sticky situation, with no aparent way out and some unpleasantly unexpected company. How is he supposed to deal with almosthaunting Potter for the rest of his notquiteafterlife when he's not even a proper ghost? Pre B5.
1. A Father's Love

Said and Done by Moon Faery 

Said and Done 00/??  
Rating: R  
Series: Harry Potter (hangs her head in shame)   
Year: 6th  
Genre: Romance/Comedy  
Pairings: HP/DM  
Spoilers: A few, but I'll try to keep them to a minimum.   
Warnings: Yaoi (AKA Slash); Death; Humor; Et cetera? I try for a well-rounded story...  
By Moon Faery

Archived: (eventually at) Moon Faery's Garden

Disclaimer: A statement created solely to save one's ass from becoming lawn for the proverbial legal mower. I do not own Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling does. All materials are used without the permission of their various owners. The only gratuity I accept is verbal (or written), and money doesn't even begin to enter the picture. However, this story line, original characters and plot are MINE. (Holds fic close to her.) Grrrr... 

Author Notes: I'm so ashamed of myself... I've strayed from the One True Path of Heero and Duo-ness. I'll probably manage to balance my new HP obsession with my GW one soon, but right now the scales are still swinging heavily towards the "Harry Potter" side. (Damn you Snippy and Snarky! You've ruined me!) 

This is just a quick test to see how well my writing will be received on the HP side of the web. ^.~ If you like, review, and I'll see about adding HP ideas to my list of bunnies to write. This is more of a prologue than anything else, so yes, there is more if it's wanted. 

Additional Note: (grovels) I want to apologize to everyone who suffered through the horrible spelling of the first posting of the prologue. >>;; I accidentally posted the pre-final check version (I save all my work CONSTANTLY ^^;; ) instead of the final, and I didn't notice until I went to re-read it. I'm sorry!

***

"Father, you're insane." Draco Malfoy glared at his father, fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles were beginning to hurt. Somehow, he managed to keep his tone to the cool drawl that he had perfected over his childhood, but it was difficult in face of his father's arrogant stupidity. He was dressed comfortably in a pair of charcoal silk slacks and a crisp white linen shirt - he had refused the tie a house elf had offered him, which had been the start of this conversation. Under no circumstances was Draco going to be caught wearing ruffles. "You won't let me go back to school this year because _Potter's a bad influence_?"

"You presume too much." Lucius eyed his son coldly, eyes shading closer to wet shale than their normal silvery gray. It made him look colder, more sinister. His suit, a carefully chosen black wool ensemble only made the contrast between his eyes and skin all the more striking. "I have my reasons, Draco, and it is not your place to question them." 

Draco didn't care about any of it though. He had finally started settling into his role as the top student of his House, his miniature war with Weasel and the Granger chit had grown into something nicely venomous without being violent enough to earn him expulsion and Potter... Potter was slipping. Every year, his resolve weakened a little more, he became just the tiniest bit more unsure of himself. Every time someone around him vanished, died, gave up, gave in, he lost a little more control. This would be the year Draco would finally break the bastard, and his father was going to take it all away! Blood was starting to seep out under his fingernails where they had sliced into his palms. "It's my life, Father. I believe I have every right to question your decisions about it." 

The older man looked at his son, eyes dragging over him as if measuring some unnamable quality that he had never noticed before. "You go to far, Draco." 

Hematite met slate over the expanse of expensive oak flooring and Asian rugs. In the back of his mind, something hissed that his father was acting different, that this wasn't the time to push. The blonde boy ignored it. Nothing had ever stopped him from speaking his mind to his parents, and some short-lived spark of conscious wasn't about to be the first thing to claim that distinction. 

For the first time during their conversation, Draco's eyes warmed up, anger tinting them ever so slightly blue-gray. "I _refuse_ to let you arrange my life to suit yourself, Father." His voice was measured, controlled so tightly that it seemed like it would snap any second, like a worn violin string. 

Lucius Malfoy seemed dumbstruck for only a bare moment before he regained his legendary composure. "You mean that." 

"Yes, I do." It was the firmest, most adult voice Draco had ever used against his father. He would have to take time to be proud of it later. "I don't want any of it." 

Lucius looked like someone had just told him Muggles had stolen his socks. "Any of it?" His gaze focused somewhere off to the left of Draco, and none of Draco's attempts to catch it again did any good. 

"None of it." Something balled tightly in his stomach. He had expected to feel relieved when he finally announced his position in matters, but instead dread was chilling his veins. Like all momentous occasions, he had carefully planned out what he would say. Unfortunately, also like all momentous occasions, he found it desperately hard to adhere to his script. "I'm not going to follow in your footsteps, a little Death Eater clone, stuck in your shadow for the rest of my life." The words tried to lodge themselves in his throat, but he pushed them through anyways. "I'm my own person, not your little puppet." 

Slate-colored eyes closed wearily as Lucius's shoulders slumped. He looked like a defeated man. Draco stared in shock - he had never seen his father look truly lost and old. Lines that he had never noticed before became suddenly apparent. Before he could say anything, the older man turned and took a few steps away. Draco could see him fiddling with the ends of his sleeves nervously. His steps rolled off the ball of his foot, making him bounce with anxious energy. 

Some deeply hidden instinct told Draco that something was wrong. This man wasn't his father suddenly, and it frightened him more than even the Forbidden Forest ever had. "Father?" 

Black wool rustled softly as Lucius finally stood still, head tilted back to look at the ceiling. "Remember this, Son. Everything I do.. ever did, is, was and always will be for the best, always for you." He turned around, and Draco realized quite suddenly that he hadn't been playing with his sleeves for no reason - he had been extracting his wand from it's forearm sheath. "I'm sorry Draco." 

For Draco, the world moved in slow motion and sound vanished entirely. His father pointed the wand a him, eyes sliding to cold glass over pain, anger, certainty and dozens of other emotions Draco couldn't even begin to name. Lucius' lips moved soundlessly and the world dissolved into a color known only as Avada Kedavra green. 

***

[Sneak Peek At Next Chapter] 

The world for the moment was warm and firm and scented every so slightly of mown grass and cherry blossoms and Quidditch and dark chocolate frogs and a few dozen other things that Draco never thought of as blending particularly well, but they did. Then it moved. Draco opened his eyes groggily. His head hurt something horrible and he couldn't breathe through whatever it was his face was pressed into. He wondered for a moment if he hadn't been into his father's liquor cabinet again, but there was no rancid taste in his mouth to indicate a hangover, so he discarded the possibility. Around him were sounds of a large gathering of people, including the usual murmur of voices and various clangs and thuds. He attempted to lift his head, but only managed to get it up a few inches before a broomstick caught him under the jaw. His head snapped back for a brief second before he fell forward once more. The impact succeeded in turning his headache into a full-blown world-splitting migraine, but not much else.

"Get the hell off my son, you pervert!"


	2. Vertigo

Said and Done 01/??  
Rating: R  
Series: Harry Potter (hangs her head in shame)  
Year: 6th  
Genre: Romance/Comedy  
Pairings: HP/DM  
Spoilers: A few, but I'll try to keep them to a minimum.  
Warnings: Yaoi (AKA Slash); Death; Humor;   
By Moon Faery

Archived: (eventually at) Moon Faery's Garden (); 

Disclaimer: A statement created solely to save one's ass from becoming lawn for the proverbial legal mower. I do not own Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling does. All materials are used without the permission of their various owners. The only gratuity I accept is verbal (or written), and money doesn't even begin to enter the picture. However, this story line, original characters and plot are MINE. (Holds fic close to her.) Grrrr...

Author Notes: For anyone who wants spoilers for the fic, I've posted my notes online (link in the author profile) in book-format under the name Lyn E. Grimn. This will expand as I make more notes. It's nothing but one big spoiler, and is in almost no way related to the cannon. Not all of this information is going to show here, but... (shrugs) This way, the people who are really curious can see for themselves. Well, most of them. (Malfoy-esque smirk)

***

The world for the moment was warm and firm and scented every so slightly of mown grass and cherry blossoms and Quidditch and dark chocolate frogs and a few dozen other things that Draco never thought of as blending particularly well, but they did. Then it moved. Draco opened his eyes groggily. His head hurt something horrible and he couldn't breathe through whatever it was his face was pressed into. He wondered for a moment if he hadn't been into his father's liquor cabinet again, but there was no rancid taste in his mouth to indicate a hangover, so he discarded the possibility. Around him were sounds of a large gathering of people, including the usual murmur of voices and various clangs and thuds. It didn't sound like any hospital or sickroom he'd ever had the displeasure of being in.

He attempted to lift his head, but only managed to get it up a few inches before the business-end of a broomstick caught him under the jaw. His head snapped back for a brief second before he fell forward once more. The impact succeeded in turning his headache into a full-blown world-splitting migraine, but not much else.

"Get the hell off my son, you pervert!"

"Lily don't!"

"Let me at him! I've wanted to wring his little neck for five years!"

"LILY!"

Draco looked up again, somehow convincing his eyes to focus on the struggling couple directly in front of him. His eyes must not have been doing a very good job of it, because it appeared that the people were fighting in the _middle_ of the table, and that they had, in fact, just passed through a rather large turkey with no ill effects and no notice from what should have been the surounding spectators. In fact, there was no reaction at all.

He was surrounded by the familiar scene of the Great Hall of Hogwarts during the Sorting Feast and after the ceremony itself, but it was decorated differently than usual. The drapings, usually done in the various House colors, were unrelieved black, quite similar to when the Diggory prat had died. A small corner of his mind wondered who had died _this_ year, and what Potter had to do with it.

"I'm going to kill him!" the red-headed woman yelled, batting at the dark-haired man's arms around her waist. She was a tiny thing - he had picked her completely up off the floor and she still didn't come up to his glasses.

"Lily, it's not his fault!" the man soothed, wincing as an elbow caught him in the stomach. The matching rings on their fingers caught the candlelight.

Jab. "It's his fault he's still there!" One of her heels caught the man in the shin.

"That's your fault." Draco had to give the man credit for his patience - he hadn't even come close to getting upset yet. "You hit him with your broomstick, dear. Calm down."

"I will when he gets his face out of my baby's lap!"

That comment popped Draco out of his headache-induced stupor. Ever so slowly, he tilted his head back to see who it was he was sprawled on.

The underside of Potter's jaw was the first thing that came into view.

With a scream that was definitely more girly than usual, Draco threw himself backwards, eyes wide in horror. "_Potter_! What the _bloody fucking hell_ do you think you're _doing_?!"

Potter never even acknowledged his presence. He just kept chatting with his friends about the decorations worriedly, occassionally glancing across the hall to the Slytherin table. Strangely enough, no one else noticed either. He would have thought that the sight of him face-down on Potter would have earned at least a few shocked stares. He scrambled to his feet and glared at the man and woman. "What's going on here?"

Lily was sulking in the man's arms, glaring at the ground and letting her feet dangle uselessly. "Shut up. I'm ignoring you for the rest of eternity, Malfoy."

Soft brown eyes looked down at the woman in amusement, his smile just slightly crooked. In a strangely familiar gesture, the man set what had to be wife down and ran his fingers through his already-messy hair. "You said that to _Malfoy_ too you know. And I told you dear, it's not his fault."

"I'm mad at you too James!" She removed her stare from the floor to her husband. Her eyes were a startlingly vibrant shade of green that Draco had only seen in two places. The most recent had been when his father had... done whatever it was he had done before Draco had woken up. 

The other place was the eyes of his sworn enemy... Harry Potter. They were Potter's eyes, down to the indecently thick black lashes and utter hatred for one Draco Malfoy.

It must be a family thing.

James Potter was petting his wife's shoulder soothingly, holding her close from behind. She was having nothing of it, and continued glaring at Draco with malice so intense he was amazed that he hadn't dropped dead where he stood. The Potters were younger than Draco had imagined them, only a few years older than himself, actually, but he supposed that it shouldn't have been a surprise. The dead never managed to acquire the habit of aging.

"You're dead." the blonde tried to keep his voice calm, but a small quaver at the end betrayed him. As unruffled as he usually appeared, this surpassed even his usual tolerance levels. Moving stairs, ghosts, dragons and heads floating midair were all somethig he'd slowly built up resistence to. Having a conversation with the very dead parents of your arch-nemesis went a bit beyond the pale, however.

"Thank you for reminding us, you- you lecherous prat!" Lily snapped, stamping her foot heavily. Somehow, her aim ended up off and she stomped on her husband's toes.

"LILY!" he yelped, face scrunching up in pain. 

The redhead looked up at him too-innocently, eyes glowing in a way the made her part of Potter's genetic code frighteningly obvious.

Maybe her aim hadn't been off after all.

He turned a slightly peeved look down at her. "You're going to pay for that."

She grinned, melting herself back into him with a purr. "I was counting on it."

Draco covered his eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm not seeing this. Potter's parents are not about to snog in front of me..." He cracked his eyes, then slammed them shut. "_Stop that_!"

There was a brief sound of two people disengaging their tongues from each other's tonsils. "Are you still here, Malfoy?"

Was it murder if the people were already dead? Who would prosecute? "Yes, unfortunately, I am, and I would appreciate an explaination as to why I am and why no one else is bothering to notice you two with your hands down each other's pants."

Lily started to say something, but James clamped a hand down on her mouth. "You'll find out soon enough," he told Draco firmly. "The best thing you can do is stick around here for a while." He looked down at his wife. "And don't you dare tell him."

Green eyes pouted up at him. She didn't even bother trying to look innocent.

"I mean it. You know what happened to us, love. He has to learn it on his own." Leaning down, James picked Lily up by the waist again, lifting until her ear was level with his mouth. He said something, but the only words Draco caught was "Headmaster's desk". Lily blushed and giggled like a school girl.

He didn't want to know. He really, _really_ didn't want to know.

***

Draco nearly fell asleep waiting for something, anything, to happen. He had discovered that, while everything seemed much too slippery or simply solid to move, he was unable to walk through objects. No one seemed to see him, and Nearly Headless Nick had shivered after passing through him, then looked directly through Draco and frowned. None of the ghosts or poltergeists saw him either, which was odd, since they usually saw everything. 

He had hung around the Patil twins for kicks, wondering what "girl talk" sounded like when there wasn't a male present to frighten out of his wits. It was depressingly similar to guy talk, but more... Poofy. After that he had attempted spying on the teacher's table in hopes of hearing something interesting, but the teachers were all very somber and didn't even bother saying "pass the salt" half of the time. He supposed that if he had two more years worth of teaching Potter to deal with he would have been depressed too.

He had just started toying with the idea of seeing who he could interact with besides the Potters (who he was certain were currently doing dirty things in Dumbledore's office) when the Headmaster stood up. His solid black robes seemed more formal than usual and made him seem even older than his usual look of a hundred-something. The students, most of whom had been nervously watching Dumbledore in anticipation of bad news, fell silent. Draco leaned against Potter's back and crossed his arms, getting a brief moment of satisfaction out of treating the Boy Who Lived like the piece of furniture he was meant to be.

Dumbledore cleared his throat. "Usually at this time of year, I say a few words of encouragement and hopefully wisdom," he began slowly, "but I am afraid that no such words are appropriate, for this year must open with sad news." He was quiet for a moment while the tension in the hall built. "Those of you from last year may have noticed an absence among our number. It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that sixth year student Mr. Draco Malfoy will not be returning to these hallowed halls."

Beside Potter, Weasley snorted and muttered quietly, "What happened? Did the git finally die?" Draco twisted to look over Potter's shoulder automatically to insult the Weasel, but the words froze in his throat. Potter had turned pasty white, and from his place behind him Draco could see the faint ripples in his pumpkin juice that indicated that his hands were shaking. None of his friends seemed to notice his distress. Draco frowned. What was Potter upset about? Maybe the Diggory thing from fourth year still bothered him. Weasel's joke probably brought back bad memories.

Dumbledore ignored the rudeness, though he must have heard the comment. In spite of himself, Draco found himself curious. What excuse had been cooked up to explain his disappearance? 

"Mr. Malfoy was found, deceased, three weeks ago. He was an excellent student and a model for his House. He will be missed." Raising his goblet, Dumbledore led the students in a toast. 

Draco froze, staring blankly into space while his fellow students drank to his memory. It wasn't true. It couldn't be. If he was dead, wouldn't he be a ghost? Or was he a Memory, just a shadow of Draco that was going to be stuck affecting the living for the rest of eternity, getting weaker and weaker until fading into oblivion when there was no one who remembered him anymore? No, he would know if he weren't really real, wouldn't he?

A tiny tremble in the back pressed up against his own drew his attention away from himself, something he gratefully allowed to happen. Potter's shaking moved from his hands to his entire body, faint tremors that he could barely feel through the rock-solid feel of the Golden Boy's robes. As close as he was to the other boy, he barely heard him say the words, "Draco's dead..."

Then he fell right through Potter and the table.

***

"Like hell I am," Draco stated firmly, wishing he was imagining the slightly girly tone of his voice. "Dead is dead. You're either it, alive or a ghost. There's no in-betweens to be had." He lounged on the Slytherin table, having found that if he simply _wanted_ to touch something it was possible, though a few things appeared to be off-limits. The Hufflepuff table, for one, was barely even visible at times, while the Gryffindor table seemed almost normal compared to the others. It was very annoying, being unable to put the pieces together into a coherent statement of his current condition, but Draco was doing his best not to go mad. The odd sensation in his stomach and his companion weren't helping.

James Potter was turning out to be (or had been) an infuriatingly patient man. The Slytherin was amazed that someone as calm as he had earned the title of Hogwarts' most notorious prankster. Looks were often deceiving, something he kept reminding himself. If he simply kept his eyes open, he was certain he could find the seam in whatever had happened to him, and a seam always mean a place to escape. The Hall had long since cleared, but James had reappeared moments after Dumbledore's announcement, thankfully without his wife. Draco pretended to ignore the scratches and hickies that decorated the older man's neck. 

"You forgot Memories," he reminded Draco simply. 

"They're unrelated to actually _being_ dead and you know it." Draco sniffed disdainfully.

Dark eyes watched him calmly with an expression of faint amusement that would have made Draco punch him... If he could get enough leverage with the floor. His last attempt at physical violence had been terribly embarrassing and he wasn't in a hurry to repeat it. "I never said you were," James explained finally. He was lounging on a table idylly, sprawled in a way that made Draco think that Potter was going to be lucky if he grew to look anything at all like his father. "I said that you're not quite dead. That's not the same as a Memory. Or a ghost, for that matter." 

"If I'm not dead, not alive and not a bloody ghost, then what the hell am I?"

James Potter was, if anything, more infuriating than his son. "Don't know."

"_You don't know?!_"

"I'm not exactly in a position to do much research," the older man reminded him casually. James sat up and glanced at the time-candle set nearby in a corner, who's wax currently read seventeen past eight. "You might want to wander about a bit," he mentioned, standing up and stretching. "Sorry I can't help more, but my out-time has been fairly low lately."

"Out-time?" Draco repeated inanely. He was beginning to wonder if death had done something to the elder Potter's brain. 

Lily chose just that second to poke her head thorugh the hall door. "I hate to interupt the man-to-man, but James..." The look she threw towards her husband was loaded with meaning. "Time." Her Potter-green eyes (or were they Evans-green?) were bright with excitement. One shoulder poked out through the wood, and the visible part of her leg was covered with what looked like a sheet.

While Draco muttered something in regards to their apparent scehdule for "togetherness activities", James hurried out. 

"Sorry, Draco, but we really need to be going!" he called cheerfully, striding through the closed door and hauling his wife with him by her bare shoulder.

"Well... HELL!" Draco glared at the door, wishing it would burst into flames. "A fat lot of good _that_ waste of air did me." The door didn't bother to reply.

***

Wandering the castle seemed to be the thing to do, after he'd been summarily abandoned by his companions in Hell, the Moaning Menaces. His first thought had been to investigate the home of his long-time enemy, but he hadn't finished sliding through the portrait - a most unpleasant experience - before he'd heard _their_ voices. Though he hadn't known the Potters for even a day, he thought that having sex under the noses of an entire roomful of people was something they would probably do. 

Instead, he headed to the library, which was - thankfully - fully tangible, down to the fuzz on the sparsely-placed rugs. He didn't buy the "you're dead" theory one bit, but it was obvious that something fairly dramatic had happened. He just had to find out what, then figure out how to reverse it. People blinked and a few stared when the books seemingly pulled themselves off their shelves and began to flip through their own pages, but no one thought it strange enough to comment on. 

He started with the Spiritual Magic section and worked his way down to the Curses. There was nothing in either, so he moved onto Charms, then the more unlikely Potions. There seemed to be nothing. One book in the History section mentioned something about color symbolism, but there wasn't enough information to follow through with. Magical Flora and Fauna seemed too unlikely to bother with, as did the tiny section on Muggles. That left the Sports and Hobbies, Fiction and Restricted areas. Somehow, he doubted that Sports and Hobbies would be of any use, and the Fiction Section of Hogwarts had been lost for centuries. It was practically a myth of its own.

The Restricted Section was the only place left to look. _'Bloody joy.'_

It was, of course, tucked away in a dark, dusty and horribly cliché part of the library. There was a desk placed to guard the entrance. It was womaned by a young assistant librarian who happened to vaguely resemble Madam Pince. He walked through the door and froze as a moment of vertigo hit him. His vision wavered for a moment - everything off to either side of him was fading in and out existence with alarming irregularity. The ground twisted sharply under his feet, flickering between solid and ephermeral so quickly that he was sunk to his knees in it before he could so much as move. At the far end, a single book stood out on the wall as solid, whole and real in the unreality. Then the world flashed harvest gold-green, and a burst of power threw him backwards out the room, slaming him into a bookcase and sending books raining down from the shelves. The assistant librarian stood up from her desk, jaw open at the appparently random occurrence.

Draco pushed up into a sitting position, spilling books off to either side. _'Shouldn't I have flown **through** the wall?'_ No sooner had he finished the thought than the books piled on him fell through to the floor.

"_DAMN IT!_"

***

Hogwarts was proving to be a very dull place when one was not-dead. The Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw dorms were completely inaccessible. When he tried to enter them, the result was even more violent than the one in the Restricted Section had been. Even the corridors outside their entrance was only vaguely solid, more memory than reality almost. The Quidditch pitch was such an odd conglomerate of tangible and ghostly that he nearly had a migrane just looking at it, and the stands were almost as bad. The formerly restricted third floor, Astronomy Tower and most of the classrooms had what seemed to be a "regular" consistentsy. They weren't quite solid, but also weren't particularly insubstancial.

The Slytherin Dorm, down in the dungeons, was most definitely unpleasantly solid. It seemed almost too-real, as if reality had been reinforced somehow, and he had to concentrate on not affecting things so much that the near-headache caused by the Quidditch Pitch returned and he nearly knocked Zabini off his feet trying to escape.

He hadn't made it farther than the common room.

That left only one even remotely interesting place in the castle to investigate. Gryffindor Tower.

Draco had known for years the location of his arch-nemisis' dorm - he wouldn't be able to call himself a Slytherin if he hadn't. Unfortunately, the password system had kept him from being able to do anything with the knowledge. Until recently.

After listening very, very carefully at the portrait of the ridiculously obese woman, Draco had established that yes, it sounded as if the tower had been abandoned by the Potters. In fact, it sounded abandoned by everyone. In his wanderings, he had forgotten that it was most likely past midnight and classes began the next morning. He never would have admitted to the sigh of relief that passed his lips as he stepped through the sleeping portrait and into the Gryffindor common room, which wasn't as empty as he'd thought.

Potter was lounging in the common room, uncaringly ignorant of the unGodly hour. He was reading a potions text, something Snape would have been shocked to note. The entire "casual" ensemble he wore had to have been at least ten too large and his belt was a length of rope, of all things, but he didn't seem to care. The warm golds, browns and overly-bright crimson décor of the room seemed to wash the color out of his skin, making him seem paler than he already was, which was already quite pallid, to say the least. 

The dorm itself was oddly comfortable. Potter looked up, looking faintly confused for a second, eyes darting around the room. For a moment, Draco almost wondered if he was back to normal, but the lack of awestruck amazement when Potter's unearthy green eyes swept past where he was standing quickly killed that brief hope. The hero of Gryffindor returned his eyes to the book. 

Draco wandered closer, leaning over to see what was so fascinating it would keep Potter up past his bedtime.

"_Venenum atqui Medium Malum Noceo_? Why Potty, I didn't know you read Latin..." Almost as soon as he finished the sentence, Potter flipped the page and tapped the book with his wand. The words blinked English for a moment. "Ah, A translator. Nevermind then. I suppose it was too much to hope for you to have some refinement." Forgetting that the dark-haired young man couldn't see him, he pointed. "That on mistranslated. _Imbuo_ is to soak, not rain. I certainly hope the Mudblood knows a better spell to teach you, if this is the best you can do on your own." He rapped the book with his forefinger, making it shake in Potter's grip.

"Peeves?" Potter slammed the tome shut through Draco's fingers just before Draco could pull them away completely. "I thought we had wards up here..." He sat up, looking around the room for signs of the ectoplasmic menace.

Completely ignoring the inanity of speaking, Draco couldn't resist comment. "Do I _look_ like a poltergeist to you, Potter?"

Potter muttered something under his breath and stood up from peering under the couch. Draco dodged as he very nearly passed through him on the way up. "Watch where you're going Potter!" 

"Harry?" a quiet voice called from up the stairs. "What's wrong?" A small, curvy redhead stepped out onto the stairs, looking over the railing at Potter. She was wearing a comfortable-looking blue bathrobe. In spite of himself, Draco couldn't help admitting that she was very pretty. For a Gryffidor, at least, which meant tolerable to look at.

The Gryffindor looked up, pausing for a second as his hand brushed through Draco's wrist. "Just reading, Ginny." 

"Weasely's _sister_?" Draco choked. When were Weasleys allowed to become attractive? Especially so suddenly. She had still been a mousy little worm at the end of the previous year. He was fairly sure that it went against the laws of the universe. It was a sure sign that the end was near.

At least he was already sort of dead.

The redhead frowned and leaned over the banister, holding the robe closed modestly. "It's late Harry. Do try to get some sleep, will you?"

He smiled boyishly and ran his fingers over his hair, smoothing his bangs forward. "I was just going." The not-dead boy rolled his eyes. Even with his friends, Potter acted like an idiot. It was a shame - Draco had begun to feel special. 

Ginny looked down at him and stood up straight, accidentally flashing a small expanse of thigh. Even Draco could tell that she believed Potter as much as she believed Muggles could fly. "Of course you were." She paused. "Harry, you know Malfoy wasn't your fault, right?"

Potter looked as if she'd threatened to feed him a rock cake. "Yeah, Gin. I know."

"Good. Don't stay up all night now."

The idiot looked sheepish. "Yes Mother."

She laughed and turned to leave. "Good night, Harry." The girls' dorm closed behind her with a soft thud. As soon as the door closed, the text had been picked up and Potter went back to reading.

Draco settled down on a small loveseat. He supposed that he couldn't feel tired in his current state, but the Gryffindor common room was, unfortunately, the most normal room he had encountered. If the only thing to do was watch Potter read, then there was no chance he was going to be uncomfortable _and_ bored out of his mind. The fire was very warm, and the cushions of the garrishly crimson seat just overstuffed enough to bid relaxation.

He was asleep before Potter finished the page.

***

[Sneak Peek At Next Chapter] 

"You're dead!"

"How kind of you to remind me," the blonde couldn't help snapping. "Tell me, Potter, are your talents at stating the obvious natural, or did you have to practice?"


End file.
